Chapter 3
From Amazon to Zipcar: No Industry Untouched
A survey from the National Association of Corporate Directors and the consulting firm of Oliver Wyman provides a sobering assessment of the tech-savviness of most boards of directors:
While some management teams have kept pace with rapidly changing technologies to succeed in today's business environment, it is the very rare board that has been able to provide the governance and leadership that is so desperately needed in this area.1
While you could argue whether they are tech-savvy, most boards are certainly paranoid about being “Blockbustered.”
The New Yorker summarizes well the company's missteps: “Blockbuster's huge investment, both literally and psychologically, in traditional stores made it slow to recognize the Web's importance: in 2002, it was still calling the Net a ‘niche’ market. And it wasn't just the Net. Blockbuster was late on everything—online rentals, Redbox-style kiosks, streaming video.”2
No wonder executives flocked to events like IBM's “Smarter Industries Symposium” in Barcelona, Spain, in 2010. More than 1,200 clients, partners, and IBM leaders from around the world gathered together to discuss how organizations could harness the enormous potential from “smarter” technologies, solutions, and business processes. Out of that event, IBM generated reports with ideas for 10 industry sectors—Banking, Communications, Electronics, Automotive, & Aerospace, Energy & Utilities, Government, Healthcare, Insurance, ...
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